Where'd The Time Go? Chapter 1
by FalloutGuy1986
Summary: Kazdin, Boone and Veronica go back in time in this 5,000 viewer celebration. We will be getting back to "Chapter 1 Kaz-humor" with this piece, which is to say you're gonna get the wide-eyed and innocent dumb courier that we started out with. Enjoy!


The 5,000th

Where'd the Time Go?

**A/N: Hello, hello fans of Kaz! As I mentioned in my work in progress, The Adventures of Kazdin Willow: Brotherhood of Steel, I have recently passed the 5,000 viewer mark and I am very excited, enthralled even with the numbers I am seeing. **

**It seems like so long ago that I was worrying (whining?) to my friend Ghoulmask because for such a long time my numbers were so small that I gasped. My work on Adult Fan Fiction was so laughably low that I ended up closing my account after three years of waiting patiently with only five comments on stuff I worked damn hard on. So I gathered up everything I wrote (My Andrew Ross series and a couple one shots of different genre) and said goodbye. But the thing is, I never wanted to walk out on you guys. I wanted to hang around and hope that things turned around, and turned around they have. Here I sit now with over 5,000 views, a slew of subscribers and 20-something reviews and I am truly happy I stayed. **

**I want to say one more time how much I appreciate my subscribers, viewers and commenters. You guys make this stuff worthwhile. It's always been fun to write creatively, but knowing there are people out there who like what I do is inspiring. Thank you all very much.**

**So, I have a two-parter for you guys. This first thing here is a special for everyone to kinda celebrate. We are gonna send Kaz and her two favorite people ever back in time!**

**Enjoy everyone!**

CHAPTER ONE: The FEELS of Excite!

Kazdin Willow practically sprinted all the way back to the lucky 38 from the eerie satellite crash zone near Primm, she was so excited. She had stared in awe and wonder at the new place she had discovered, well, more or less by accident as she was transported there against her own will in the blink of an eye. But she felt that she had discovered it, and so in her mind she had.

Kazdin arrived at the North Gate of the Strip in record time, beating her old time of six hours by half an hour. She was too beside herself with excitement to actually record that number in her head, however and therefore the minutes which had been shaved were forgotten immediately.

"Oh boy! Oh boyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboy!" Kazdin exclaimed as she rushed toward the giant glitzy gate blocking off the strip from anybody without the acceptable number of caps.

"Hey Trevor!" Kazdin called to the Securitron guarding the gate, one of the six who's duty began and ended at the gate every single night. She had originally had the idea to rotate the metallic guards every few hours, but Boone had talked her down from that idea. She had an aw shucks look for a couple of hours, but she had come to realize just how pointless rotating robots, who neither felt pain or grew weary, through their guard duty.

"I am Securitron 546745-A, ma'am." The synthesized voice of the robot explained in a monotone.

Kazdin stood stock still and cocked her head slightly as she pondered what the strange numbers meant. She forgot the numbers the guard robot gave her after two minutes, but continued to mull around the idea of what the numbers, whatever they were, could mean. At one point she actually started to drool a little as her mind slowly processed this new information.

"Uhh…I mean…Trevor."

If the hulking robot had the capacity to sound incredulous then that would be the exact tone he would have affected.

However the former courier heard the robot answer by its unofficial nickname and she piped up immediately and bounced on her toes a little.

"Okay! I need to get through! I gotta go to the Lucky 38 and talk to Craig and Veronica!" Kaz exclaimed as excited as she was before she lapsed into her temporary thinking-coma.

"You have a free passport, Super-Awesome Mayor Kazdin." The robot intoned patiently.

"Oh, yeah! I was just so excited that I forgot. Thanks, Trevor!" Kazdin said smiling wide as she pushed the doors open and entered the Strip.

The Lucky 38 stood as tall as it ever had, gleaming in the afternoon sun. Its roulette spinner may have been permanently frozen in its current position, but that didn't stop Kazdin from trying to spice it up with a few lights around the outside windows.

The impromptu decorating job was one that Boone tried his best to discourage, and even the normally supportive Veronica tried to dissuade her from donning safety rope salvaged from an old sporting goods store and hanging precariously outside the window…hundreds of feet from the very hard, very unforgiving ground and doing her work.

She had gloated that she knew she could do it when she returned into the safety of the abandoned restaurant resting atop the Lucky 38. Boone and Veronica were just happy that she made it through alive.

Kazdin burst through the door into the always dingy casino, the reds and blacks and yellows and greens all faded through years of neglect, and the various games and relics downstairs were eventually forgotten by the late Mr. House.

She hit the elevator button two or three times in haste before the doors opened with a ding. She stepped inside and bounced impatiently on her toes before the doors finally opened once more and she stepped out into the hall of the Presidential Suite she had set her sights on.

"Heyyyyy… Umm, hello? Hello?" Kazdin called into the hallway of the suite, flabbergasted to find that nobody was around.

"Hello? Craig? Veronica? Anybody? Hellooooo!" Kazdin called as she went about checking doors and finding every room to be devoid of any intelligent life.

"…J.D.?" Kazdin called out softly to the mercenary sniper who sometimes called the suite her home, whether or not the rest of the group was comfortable with it.

The same ghostly silence answered her. She sighed before she stepped back into the elevator. She wondered where they could be. The only other two places were the restaurant and the .

Kazdin knew that Veronica would not be able to resist the priceless technology located on the Penthouse floor, and with Mr. House long gone, that was as good a place as any to look for her wayward friends.

She stepped off of the elevator once again on the Penthouse floor, looking left and right. She heard papers rustling from below the stairs and she smiled triumphantly.

Kazdin made her way down the steps two at a time. Veronica was indeed on this floor, flipping through the many books found on the shelves that formerly constituted House's private office floor.

"Veronica! Where is everybody?" Kazdin asked, approaching her longtime friend.

Veronica greeted her happily, placing one of the ancient tomes back onto the shelf, a book called _Dante's Inferno._

"Hey, Kaz. You're finally back! Me and Boone were going crazy bored without you around to entertain us." Veronica quipped, making Kazdin smile.

"You didn't have any problems around here with politics did you?" Kazdin asked, her smile turning into a worried frown.

"No, nothing to be worried about. The Kings started griping about having to pay a larger tax than most of the factions around here. We explained that it was because they were more well-to-do and could afford what most other Freesiders couldn't, but that we would raise the issue with you. No need to worry about it now though.

"Also, Julie met with Boone to talk about increasing protection for the Mormon Fort. They've had a few break-ins and Julie was even robbed at gunpoint a few days ago by some radical mercenaries. They killed her guards and she was forced to give them chems and other supplies. It damn near bankrupted the Followers, but don't worry. The Securitrons followed them and they're all dead now. Unfortunately the supplies were gone. So Boone sent over a squad of Brotherhood of Steel Paladins to help protect the Mormon Fort."

"Good! Good, I hate to see Julie get threatened and bullied. She's so nice." Kazdin said, her brow creasing with anger that the Followers had been threatened. She loved the Followers and Julie in particular, although she adored Arcade Gannon as well. Julie was her favorite though. She often took her out for girl's nights over at the Ultra Luxe.

Julie could be demure at times, but with the downward spiral of crime in Freeside since Kazdin came to power and with a new pending marriage to Bill Ronte in the works, she seriously came out of her shell and started being one of Kazdin's favorite hang-out buddies. She even agreed to have a night in with Kaz and Veronica in the Lucky 38, gossiping and painting each other's nails and talking about magazines and boys. A very welcome respite from the violence outside the walls of Freeside and the Strip. It was a chance for Kaz and her friends to just be ladies and she relished every opportunity.

"Yeah, she's great. It sucks how some people would prey on a woman like her. It just makes my blood boil." Veronica said with an angry sigh. Kazdin nodded. She knew all too well.

"Any problems with the NCR remnants around Freeside?" Kazdin asked.

"No actually, after the initial riots and such a few months ago when you took power the Securitrons and the Brotherhood and everybody pretty much quelled the violence and they are calming down and trying to fit into life. So that is a very good thing." Veronica answered with a smile.

Kazdin nodded.

"Damn, but I hated doing that." Kazdin sighed.

"What, quelling an uprising?" Veronica asked. Kaz nodded.

"Well, sorry to say this, but the only way to protect your regime is to stand against people who are uprising simply out of spite. If you were doing wrong and were corrupted then I'd have to put a few knots on your head, but you have ruled admirably and are adored by most of the populace now. The NCR remnants were the ones who started shooting first." Veronica reassured her. It actually made Kaz feel better, knowing that she wasn't some tyrant putting down dissidents who had a right to rebel against a dictator.

"Anyway, Boone is upstairs a level. He has moved into one of the big beds resting on the landing up there through the curtain. Says your guys' bedroom is too lonely without you there." Veronica said with a knowing smile.

Kazdin's own smile was one of affection.

"He said that?" Kazdin said, her eyes misting.

"Yeah he did. He's actually pretty romantic." Veronica answered.

Kazdin nodded and wiped a tear from her eye.

"By the way, you bounded down those steps two at a time. Excited much?" Veronica asked with a big grin.

This reminded Kazdin and she sucked in a huge breath before presenting the grey box in her hands to Veronica who eyed it curiously.

Kazdin opened the lid wide and there within the metal walls of the lockbox sat a technological marvel. It was about a foot long and was very light to the touch. It glowed with purple energy and emitted a low pulsing noise. It looked like a ray gun but carried no ammunition.

"This is the Transportalponder. No idea why it's got such a long and hard to remember name, but it is fucking EPIC!" Kazdin exclaimed.

"Whoa, cool! I like the purple part!" Veronica said.

"What does it do?" the scribe asked staring at it longingly.

"When you pull the trigger when you're outside it will transport you to Big Mountain in like a second! It's teleporting technology and I thought since it can be programmed with the long/lat of Big Mountain then it could maybe transport us anywhere else we want to go." Kazdin said, proud that she remembered just how it worked.

"But doesn't your pip boy already do that?" Veronica asked, looking to Kazdin's right arm on which she kept the strange device.

"Yeah, but only for me." Kazdin said offhandedly, still staring at the device held in the box between the two friends.

"We could go to the moon with this thing." Kazdin said, her voice low with reverence.

"Yeah I guess, but why would you want to?" Veronica asked.

"Would you _not _want to go to the moon?" Kazdin asked, surprised.

"There's no oxygen." Veronica deadpanned.

"Oh yeah! Well, I picked up a space suit at the Repconn Headquarters when we cleared it out of all those ghouls." Kazdin reminded Veronica.

"Oh! Then hell, maybe you could go to the moon." Veronica said.

"Nah, I wouldn't unless I was bored one day and you guys were out. I only have one space suit." Kazdin said.

"I'm sure neither Boone nor myself would argue with you too much." Veronica said with a laugh.

"But I might get eaten by Martians." Kazdin said, her eyes growing wide with the thought. Veronica playfully slapped Kazdin in the back of her head with a loud laugh.

"Martians are on Mars, Kazdin!" Veronica shouted within a fit of laughter. Kazdin's cheeks grew red.

"You don't know that." Kaz defended herself.

"The term Martian has Mars right in the title." Veronica said.

"Have _you _ever been to space?" Kazdin argued, hands clutching the device as she took it out of the box to look at it and hold it.

"No, I haven't but trust me, Martians are on Mars." Veronica said.

"Prove it!" Kazdin argued back, holding the Transportalponder between them.

"Okay Kaz, that is power infinite you are holding in your hands. Give it to me and I can learn about it." Veronica said. Kazdin shook her head and held it close.

Veronica reached in and grabbed the thing and tugged on it in an effort to dislodge it from Kazdin's hands.

"Let me see it!" Veronica shouted.

"No! You want it for yourself!" Kazdin shouted back, pulling on the device.

"Hey, it's kind of hard to sleep with you guys yelling." Boone said, appearing beside the two friends. He reached in and tried dislodging the piece of technology from both squabbling women.

His thumb hit a button at random and all of a sudden the trio was engulfed in a pulsating, transparent blue orb of energy.

"Hey…Does everything look blue…" Kazdin started as the three friends disappeared in seconds, only to reappear somewhere else. Somewhere…different.

The building was the same but everything was so much brighter and better kept. The bookshelves were clean and chipper and made of polished wood rather than the splintering substance that Kaz was used to.

The concrete floors were covered in polished tile and instead of a gigantic monitor and patrolling robots, the far room housed hundreds of people, dancing and singing and laughing as a hearty swing tune played. Frank Sinatra's unmistakable tones emanated from the radios all around the Lucky 38 and the lights were dimmed, allowing for a more romantic atmosphere.

The men wore button down shirts tucked into corduroy trousers, some wearing fedoras but most having various haircuts of the 50's. Pompadours with bushy sideburns, slicked back hair with pencil mustaches.

A group of five greasers stood in the corner of the room looking cool and collected as they chatted with their boys. Black denim and black leather motorcycle jackets worn open over tight fitting white tee-shirts. One of the boys eschewed the traditional greaser jacket in favor of the simple white shirt, allowing him to show off his muscular chest, abs and arms, the latter part of the shirt rolled up tight on the right displaying a not-so-concealed pack of cigarettes. Their hair was slicked back with all the gel they could fit in their hair, and the black follicles were going nowhere until it was time to shower.

The girls in the crowd wore single piece silk dresses in their greens and pinks and Kazdin's favorite color of blue. Most of the dresses were held in place by a single large brown button at their shoulders. Their knee length socks protected their feet from leather pumps matching their dresses. Their pocketbooks were held tightly underneath their arms, the thin spaghetti strap taught around their bare shoulders.

The women's hairstyles were straight out of a fashion magazine. Short hair cropped beautifully to frame pretty faces while medium length hair was curled along the left sides, framing their equally pretty faces with an air of class. Sparse makeup and glopped-on lipstick accented their lovely facial features.

"…Or is it just me?" Kazdin finished her previous thought as all three of the hardened commandos stared in silent wonder as they looked in on in a Saturday Night sock hop in progress.

"Something tells me we're not in our Mojave anymore." Veronica gasped in suspense.

Kazdin looked in amazement at her pip boy.

The date: July 7th, 1951

"Well…shit." Kazdin breathed.


End file.
